1. Technical Field
This invention generally relates to the field of occupational health and safety. More particularly, the invention relates to a health modality for corporations. Specifically, the invention relates to a program incorporating a combined occupational therapy and ergonomic modality in a company that is designed to proactively reduce the number of injuries to employees which could be caused by their normal work-related activities.
2. Background Information
Employees in a variety of industries may be required to perform repetitive motions, employ force to push or pull heavy objects, assume or hold awkward positions or may have to push parts of their body against hard or sharp objects in the performance of certain tasks on the job. Some of these procedures may result in the employee becoming injured over a period of time. In many instances, the equipment the employee is using is not designed in an ergonomic manner and, consequently, habitual use of that equipment leads to injury. So, for example, if a factory employee has to habitually and frequently reach for a piece of equipment, they will tend to develop muscle fatigue and possible injury of the reaching arm. If such an injury occurs, the employee will be less productive and will possibly have to be relieved of that position for a period of time. The employee may also have to be sent to doctors, physiotherapists or occupational therapists for rehabilitation before they can return to work.
There is a substantial amount of effort devoted to assisting industry to make the workplace a safe and healthy environment for employees. Most of this effort is directed to addressing practices and procedures that cause musculoskeletal disorders in particular. This focus, known broadly as ergonomics, studies how people perform their daily tasks and how to minimize the stresses and strains caused by repetitive motion, bending, lifting, maneuvering the body and the effect of machines and other tools that tend to increase the likelihood of musculoskeletal problems developing. Ergonomists are trained to assess how a particular type of employee conducts their daily tasks and will make suggestions as to how better to perform a task or alter equipment in order to reduce the possibility of injury. A wealth of information and professionals are available to assist industries to address ergonomic issues. For instance, OSHA, which is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration of the United States Department of Labor, has published industry and task specific guidelines for grocery retailers. These guidelines have been produced in response to the evaluation of many years of data from the grocery industry and include suggestions as to how to perform standard grocery store tasks such as lifting objects during shelf stocking or working at a cash register, in a less injurious fashion.
Even with this wealth of information and such guidelines in place, some equipment cannot be modified to be ergonomic and some tasks can only be modified to a certain degree to make them more user-friendly. Consequently, numerous employees become injured on the job every year and have to face and overcome those injuries. There is, once again, a wealth of information and professionals available to aid people in recovering from musculoskeletal-type injuries after they have occurred. These professionals include doctors, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and chiropractors, just to name a few. The injured employee may suffer a lot of pain, lose income and may also have to relearn how to do their job in a different way in order to recover. Additionally, the employer will likely have had a drop in productive activity from that injured employee and possibly had to pay for rehabilitation and recovery time for that employee. All of this drives up the cost of doing business and results in much pain and economic distress for the employee.
There is therefore a need in the art for an improved system of addressing the potential for musculoskeletal and other injuries to employees that might be caused by job-related activities.